Run for Your Life - James Patterson [84]
I might have succeeded, except he somehow extended the steel baton and whipped it down flush between my legs. I screamed again, this time from pain, and curled up with my eyes rolling back into my head.
Meyer paused to wrestle with the airplane, managing to pull it out of its dive and aim it through the building corridors and toward Central Park. Then he hit me on the forehead. It felt like he’d cracked the whole front of my skull. The world went gray as he shoved me back down into my seat.
His last measured blow with the baton whiplashed my head so hard into the door beside me that the window broke. I saw wheeling lights and blood streaming down the interior of the plane like a dark curtain, before my body went limp and my eyes closed.
I was just about gone, but somewhere deep in my head, a tiny spark of consciousness fought to stay lit.
Chapter 93
MAYOR CARLSON WAS ON THE THIRD MILE of his before-bed elliptical machine trek when Patrick Kipfer, one of his deputy chiefs, stuck his head in the doorway of Gracie Mansion’s basement gym.
“The Commissioner,” he said. “I forwarded it to your cell.”
The mayor hit the elliptical’s Pause button and lowered the volume of the hanging TV before he lifted his phone.
“Commissioner?” he said.
“Sorry to bother you, Mort,” Commissioner Daly said. “We got a hostage situation. One of our homicide detectives, Mike Bennett. His family said a man came into their apartment and abducted him and his four-year-old daughter.”
Bennett? the mayor thought. Wasn’t he the cop who was at the Blanchettes, the one who’d wanted to shut down the party?
“Tell me it isn’t the spree killer.”
“We have to go on that assumption.”
Carlson wiped his sweating face on his NYU T-shirt.
“Goddammit. Do we have any idea where they went? Any ransom demand? Any contact?”
“Nothing so far,” Daly said. “This happened less than an hour ago. His unmarked vehicle is missing, so we’ve notified state troopers and our guys.”
“I know you’re doing everything you can, Commissioner,” the mayor said. “You think of any way I can help, let me know immediately.”
“Will do.”
The mayor stared at the Pause button on the elliptical after he placed his cell back down. Should he call it a night? No, he decided, reaching for the button. No excuses. His cholesterol was through the roof. Not to mention how tight his suits were getting these days, with all the fund-raiser food. Just do it, and all that garbage. Besides, what good would he be to the city if he had a heart attack?
He was just getting back up to pace when Patrick returned and stuck his head in the doorway.
This time, the mayor hit the Stop button as he lifted his cell phone.
“The commissioner again?”
“The other commissioner,” his aide said. “Frank Peterson, from Port Authority Police.”
The mayor gave him a puzzled look. Christ, when it rained, it poured. What did the Port Authority commissioner want?
“Frank? Hi. What can I do for you?” the mayor said.
“One of our cops, a young guy named Tommy Wi, was just shot dead out at Teterboro,” Peterson said somberly.
The mayor shook his head in disbelief as he stepped off the machine. First a kidnapping, then a murder?
“That’s . . . ,” he started to say, but couldn’t find a word. “What happened?”
“Just before Officer Wi was shot, he called in and said an NYPD detective had asked for access to the tarmac. Two minutes later, a twin-engine Cessna was hijacked by a pair of men. Nearby, we found an NYPD unmarked radio car with a little girl inside, saying her daddy is Detective Mike Bennett.”
“Mr. Mayor,” his aide Patrick said, coming in again with another cell phone in his hand. “It’s important.”
Christ, another call? He had only two ears.
“Sorry, Frank, can you hold a minute?” he said to the Port Authority commissioner. What now? he thought as Patrick traded phones with him.
“Hello, Mayor Carlson,” said a crisp